


Top and tail (3)

by nutsforwinter



Series: Close [7]
Category: Fargo (2014)
Genre: M/M, Pre-Series
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-03-01 16:39:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,849
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2780210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutsforwinter/pseuds/nutsforwinter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>12:11AM. Maybe something’s on TV worth watching.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Top and tail (3)

The liquor seeps into his socks, and considering how long he’s been rooted to the spot after the last of Numbers’ footsteps have died away, he wouldn’t be surprised if his toes have gotten pruney from marinating in the cold alcohol. His forehead is throbbing, and it’s only when he removes his hand, sticky with whiskey and blood, that he realizes how hard he’s been pushing his palm into his skull. Even a shallow cut on the head bleeds profusely, Wrench knows. But the same hackneyed truth that makes him hesitant to clip a mark across the face on a carpeted scene is threatening to contribute to the mess on Numbers’ floor.

Once he convinces himself that Numbers is a fully-grown man more than capable of looking after himself and does not need pursuing, he also comes to the conclusion that he needs to staunch the head wound before it causes irreversible damage to the hardwood flooring, even if it means rummaging through Numbers’ possessions to get to the first aid kit. He gingerly picks his way out of the shards of glass toward the bathroom in Numbers’ bedroom.

Despite his intention to prioritize first aid, he can’t help but pause at the foot of the bed. Even in the dim light seeping in from the living room, he can make out the spot where he slept a few hours ago, the sheets that had wrinkled and bunched underneath his weight. Numbers’ side of the bed is pristinely made, and looks as if he had never been there.

The bathroom is spacious and when Wrench switches on the light, the warm glow emanating from the five bulbs above the mirror illuminates every corner of it. The toilet seat is still raised from when he used it before getting ambushed by that woman.

That woman.

Pushing away the speculations spawning only more speculations, each more nebulous than the last, he tentatively feels under the rim of the mirror over the sink, not without noting what a mess he looks, and pulls it open to reveal a medicine cabinet. The one advantage of being smacked upside the head by a bottle of whiskey is the disinfectant properties of its contents, so he will settle for gauze and tape to bind the wound. He spots them on the top shelf and tries to ignore the bottles of Fluoxetine, Alprazolam, Zolpidem, likely courtesy of Fargo’s consultant physician, and a general overabundance of pills stacked and arranged like buildings across the lower shelves as he reaches over them.

As he swings the mirror shut, a flash of red and blue at the edge of his periphery catches his attention. Through the small square window in the glass-door shower is a view of a street corner and a police cruiser behind a sedan with its hazards blinking beneath a street lamp. Years of doing everything in his power to have nothing to do with the police have given Wrench a keen awareness of their presence, one that involves a knack for detection rather than a response of fear. But with things being the way they are tonight, with Numbers out on his own in God-knows-what state of mind, he feels a jolt of unease in the pit of his stomach. He shouldn’t worry; his partner would never be that careless, he knows that.

But before tonight, what he knew was that Numbers was much too professional, much too guarded, to let anyone into his life, much less a girlfriend. If he was wrong once, what’s to say he won’t be again?

He turns back to the task at hand. Whichever scenario is going to play out in the next few hours, he would rather face it without having to scrub blood from his eye every two seconds. As much as it hurts, he uses a patch of gauze to apply pressure to his still-bleeding cut after checking there are no shards of glass in his skin. It’s above his left eye, and if it weren’t for his eyebrow the blood would be dripping straight into it. Between fresh surges of blood, he can see the cut itself and grits his teeth. It’s going to need stitches. The bleeding stubbornly resists his attempts to staunch it, but he finally manages to get it down to a thin trickle and tapes a fresh piece of gauze over the cut. The stitches can wait until later. Besides, he’s not a huge fan of pricking himself with needles.

When he looks back out the window both vehicles have gone, leaving the corner empty. He breathes a sigh of relief in spite of himself. If Numbers had been taken into custody without him, really he wouldn’t be able to do anything aside from informing Fargo, and that by pager. The syndicate has the means to take care of whatever petty issue that surfaced every now and then, and this is another thing Wrench knows. Yet oddly enough, when it comes to Numbers, Wrench doesn’t want to have to leave it to Fargo.

He washes off the blood which has managed to stay off his clothes, much to Wrench's relief. On his way out, he spots the numbers glowing from the alarm clock on the night stand. 12:11AM. Maybe something’s on TV worth watching.

***

He couldn’t say how many hours have passed, nor how many episodes of the NCIS marathon he’s sat through, but his socks and shirt are dry by the time the door swings open and Numbers marches in. Wrench has barely time to register his presence when Numbers is in front of him, perfectly blocking his view of an awkward close-up of Harmon. To be more precise, his chest is in front of him, and Wrench has to tilt his head up to look at his face. The sight of him wearing his open coat over a wrinkled t-shirt and boxers is humorous, but no one is laughing.

Wordlessly, Numbers leans down and forward, and before Wrench can even think to react, lifts the bandage off his forehead and examines the cut.

Numbers told him once before that he finds Wrench’s gaze unsettling, and a even little “ _R-U-D-E._ ” Unlike Numbers, who can apparently hear subtle nuances in the tone of a voice, Wrench depends entirely on sight to glean information; a shift of the eyebrow, a wayward glance, a nervous flick of the fingers, a turn of the lip, a shrug of the shoulders. To him, visual cues are everything, and while he knows many hearing people share Numbers’ discomfort with being looked at, he has never let that shame him into averting his gaze.

Wrench looks at Numbers now. His face is even more stony than usual and his fading bruises shadow the grimace in which his eyebrows are perpetually set. He folds the gauze and blots at the wound with its clean side, then stalks off toward the kitchen, where Wrench loses sight of him. Soon he returns with a white-hot needle in one hand and a Q-tip and a length of thread floating in a glass of what looks and smells to be vodka in the other. He plunges the needle into the glass and removes the thread that’s been soaking in it. As he pulls the coffee table up in front of Wrench with his leg and sits on it, Wrench closes his eyes.

With each pinch on his partially-numb skin, he counts. One, two. The thread tugs itself taut, competing the stitches. Three, four. Tug. Five. Tug. Six. Tug. When nothing happens, Wrench opens his eyes in time to see Numbers pulling out a switchblade from his coat pocket. He closes them again right as the thread snaps apart, followed by a cool yet burning Q-tip gliding over the sewn cut.

He feels a tap on his knee and opens his eyes to find Numbers’ gaze.

_Patch it up._

He obeys, and as Numbers slinks back into the kitchen, Wrench makes his way to the bathroom where Numbers knows he knows the bandages are.

***

The debacle earlier that night has seemingly had no depletive effect on the stash of alcohol Numbers keeps in his dwelling, and Wrench enters the kitchen to the sight of Numbers peeling the plastic off the neck of a brand-new bottle of bourbon. Numbers sees or hears him coming into the kitchen and cocks his head in the direction of the fridge inquiringly.

_Ice?_

For Wrench, it’s easier to just nod.

With a sense of timing Wrench could never get right with the same refrigerator, Numbers releases the switch just as the dispenser spits out a single ice cube. Moments later they are sitting across the counter from one another with a glass in front of them, and a near-full bottle of bourbon by Numbers’ right hand. There’s no ice in Numbers’ glass, and in the blink of an eye, there’s no liquor either. He immediately remedies that by pouring himself another glass, this time filling it to the brim.

The pattern continues. Each time Numbers sips his drink slowly, once in a while bringing the glass to his eye and inspecting it, as if intrigued by a drowning spider struggling in the amber liquid. Wrench remains still and sober in his seat, staring at his partner, silently daring him to explain, daring him to vent, daring him to become angry – to say anything, really. Numbers’ face is impossible to read.

About halfway through his fifth glass, Numbers does say something. In fact, he starts to say a lot, none of which Wrench can understand through his facial hair, not with his level of lip-reading. Once or twice, Wrench spots a glimmer of the eye, a twitch of the mouth, but otherwise his face is still inscrutable. The entire time, Numbers is looking at Wrench’s untouched glass and never once makes eye contact. Which would have been easy if he had just looked up, because the entire time, Wrench’s eyes never leave Numbers’ face.

After a moment of stillness, Numbers seems to notice Wrench for the first time in an hour. His eyes narrow apologetically as he smiles wanly.

He circles a fist over his chest.

Wrench doesn’t even want to fathom what he is apologizing for. He does feel a little worn out from playing the silent confidant. But the drunken show at regret is just a device to fill in the empty spaces in between fruitless attempts at meaningful interaction; it doesn’t change anything between them.

A flurry of hands pulls him out of thought.

 _All I do is break shit,_ he is signing, barely intelligible. Wrench spots the telltale glint in Numbers’ eye, but still he’s caught off guard when, as if to prove his point, Numbers turns in his seat and throws his empty glass at the wall against which Wrench had leaned cradling his bleeding head some hours ago.

Wrench doesn’t hear the impact, nor does he feel it, but he flinches at the explosion of glass, at the scattering facets of light shimmering as they spray across the floor. Now there is a bottle’s and two glasses’ worth of glass lying in fragments in the same corner of the apartment, dangerous spikes barring the way to Numbers’ room.

He turns back in time to catch Numbers slumping back into his seat, his shoulders shaking with the last bouts of mirthless laughter.

 _You should stop._ Wrench reaches across the counter to slide away the bottle. At this point, it’s better to get it out of Numbers’ grasp for more reasons than one.

Numbers’ eyebrows lift into an inverted V as he considers Wrench with his chin on his chest. Then he smiles that thin smile again and lifts his hands away from the bottle in a gesture of whole-hearted resignation, letting him take the bottle.

_Can I ask you something?_ he asks, as he watches Wrench's hand move the bottle away from him. 

Wrench’s patience with Numbers’ behavior is thinner than his own drink, which by now is almost as much alcohol as water. He remains unresponsive long enough to discourage a man any less drunk than Numbers.

 _What?_ he asks reluctantly.

At the long stare that ensues, Wrench's irritation beats a flustered retreat and his skin grows hot with embarrassment.

Numbers just looks, looks, looks. His dark eyes that are usually bright with sharp focus are glassy and dazed-looking, but belie a concentration no less intense, and they are tugging at Wrench with a magnetic force. It’s incredibly uncomfortable, and becoming increasingly so, but while Wrench squirms under the gaze too compelling to ignore, Numbers appears oblivious to any awkwardness in the atmosphere. Maybe this discomfort is what Numbers was alluding to when he told him off about being “ _R-U-D-E._ ”

Eventually Wrench breaks eye contact by throwing back the watery bourbon, as disgusting as it is. As he had hoped, Numbers has lost interest in whatever he was going to say just seconds before, and is back to rambling about something or other.

***

He can’t hear the retching or the coughing, but he sure as hell can smell it. He knows how much Numbers hates to vomit, mostly because of the smell. He remembers that Numbers once told him that he “ _yells into the toilet_ ” when he becomes sick, and for all the times he wished he could know his partner’s voice (he imagined it was thin yet penetrating, and intimidating judging by the body language of those on the receiving end of his interrogations), he is glad he cannot hear him now.

Wrench sits with his back against the sink cabinet, mentally and physically spent from sitting through the one-sided conversation which must have gone on for at least two hours, then hauling Numbers’ drunk ass through the maze of shards without dropping it, as tempting as it was. From time to time, he glances quickly to his side to make sure Numbers isn’t drowning in his own bodily fluids, but for the most part, he concentrates on suppressing the nausea creeping into his own gut while regretting that watery shot of whiskey.

Eventually Numbers finishes his business and sits back against the wall, breathing heavily. His face is red and tears are streaming down his cheeks from the effort of expelling whatever was in his stomach. He crawls over to Wrench, and using his shoulder for support, grapples his way up to a stooping position over the sink and washes himself. Wrench wants to leave but can’t bring himself to get up just yet, and so just stays put, and tries not to be bothered by the stray droplets he can feel splashing against his throbbing forehead. He sees Numbers towel himself dry and takes that as his cue to stand and help him to his bed. He all but throws the smaller man into the appropriate side of the bed, realizing too late the difficulty of moving him from above the duvet to underneath it. Too impatient to even attempt the maneuver, he folds the other half of the comforter over, sandwiching Numbers in the sheets.

It’s dark, as no one has bothered to turn on any light in the bedroom, and Wrench starts to follow the light from the living room out when he feels a hand gripping his wrist, weak but arresting. By the dim light, he can just make out Numbers doing his best to sign one-handed.

_Don’t leave._

Wrench scoffs. Where does Numbers think he can go if not here?

 _I won’t,_ he replies curtly.

But when he makes to pull away, the hand holds him back.

_You can’t leave._ The words are commanding, but Numbers' face betrays an earnest appeal. 

An image of that woman, her terrified eyes, her bruised wrist, conjures itself unbidden in his mind. Wrench shakes his head firmly.

 _I can,_ he signs slowly, to be certain Numbers will get it. _But I won’t._

But he’s not sure how much of that Numbers understands, because as far as he can tell, he’s already gone. He carefully disentangles himself from Numbers’ clammy fingers and shuts the door behind him.

The mess on Numbers’ floor is looking to stay for the time being. It could serve as an excuse for him not to go back in there. He lays face-up on the couch, but after a few seconds, a chill seeps into his skin. There’s no throw, nothing to use as a blanket. Except the coat Numbers had shrugged off and tossed onto the coffee table in the middle of the drinking episode.

Wrench pulls it over himself. The height difference between him and his partner has always been obvious, but when his legs refuse to be covered below the knees, it hits him in a new way. At least he’s wearing socks and pants. He closes his eyes, but instead of darkness, a soft yellow light follows him through his eyelids. He could get up and shut it off, but he would have to get up.

Wrench sighs and wriggles a bit until the black coat is over his head.

Finally, darkness.


End file.
